


A Family Trait

by Derin



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco and his mother have dinner together, and she breaks some news.</p><p>Secret Santa for gallyg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family Trait

Eva watched Marco from under about six layers of makeup and a wig. One advantage to seeing her son was that she wasn't automatically the most famous person in the area, but it didn't entirely stop reporters from trying to schedule interviews or ex-Yeerks and ex-Controllers from going white and trying to hide at the sight of her. A handful of tips from Marco's makeup guy and a really good quality wig were just less trouble most of the time.

She watched her son laugh at something the woman beside him said, wink and say something flirtatious back. She stepped close enough to hear his words and caught his eye.

“Gotta go,” Marco told the handful of people around him, fingers twinkling in a small wave. “I have a date with the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“So I'm not the most beautiful, then?” the girl he'd flirted with asked, humour in her voice as she raised an eyebrow.

“No, you're the most enchanting. It's very different.” He kissed her fingertips.

Eva retreated before anybody noticed her and headed for her son's gaudy mansion alone. Fifteen minutes later she was in his ridiculously luxurious bathroom reapplying her makeup the way she liked it when she heard him enter.

“You know,” she called out as she dragged a brush through her hair, “girls don't like to be told that somebody else is the most beautiful girl in the world. Just a tip.”

“Alise knew who I meant, Mom,” Marco replied, leaning in the doorway. “She wasn't offended.”

“So that was Alise. When are you bringing her home to meet your dear mother?” Eva joked.

“Oh, I bring her home plenty. She's Vera's twin.” Vera was Marco's very beautiful, very stylish accountant who spent a lot of her free time 'working late' at his house and lounging around his pool. The media had noticed. What they hadn't noticed but Eva had was that Vera had her own little guest room in Marco's mansion, almost never came to Marco's living quarters unless she had to run a financial detail by him, and the pair only ever flirted or touched if there were cameras pointed at them. She wasn't the only such girl in Marco's employ, but she was the most popular with the media.

“And she's a...?”

“Personal stylist.”

Eva raised a brow as she turned from the mirror. “A dangerous game, Marco. That kind of hype can turn on you, you know.”

He shrugged. “We're negotiating a new movie deal in two months. We need the hype. We've set up a job for Alise in England in about six months that can be pulled ahead if the media takes it in an unpredictable direction, but come on. They're the media.” Now that his mother had put her makeup down, he swept forward and wrapped her in his arms. She hugged him back, tightly.

“What's for dinner?” she murmured into her son's hair, still not quite believing after all this time that yes, he was _there_ ; she was free, he was there, and it was over, not some years-long dream.

“How do you feel about dinner of the TV variety?” he asked.

She pulled back and frowned at him. “Marco, look at all this. You can afford a chef. You can – ” she stopped at the little smile playing on his lips. “You're teasing me.”

“Would I do such a thing?” Marco gently escorted his mother into the dining room. A young man that Eva didn't know was setting plates of stew on the table. It was normal home-made stew, not fancy gourmet food, and it smelled heavenly. Eva poked at it, wondering if she would be able to eat any of it. It was getting time to talk, and her stomach was in knots.

“So,” Marco said, poking his own fork into a bit of meat, “to what do I owe the honour of this visit?”

Eva swallowed.

“Mom?” There was worry in Marco's voice. Eva didn't want him to be worried.

“I thought we should probably tell you in person, before the tabloids pick it up,” she said quietly. “I mean, your father should have been here too, but he's...” she shrugged.

“Mum, what happened?”

“Nothing! Nothing,” she said quickly. “But we, uh... your father and I, we're getting a divorce.”

Marco was still. Silent.

“Marco?”

“That's not funny, you know.”

“It's not meant to be funny. It's the truth.”

“You can't get a divorce! You only just found each other!”

“We 'found each other' over a year ago,” she pointed out gently. “I know this isn't what you wanted, Marco, but we tried, we really did. We just... we're different people now. After everything.”

There was silence for a while as Marco ate stew. Eventually he said, “I guess there's no end to what the war can take from us, huh? Even when it's over.”

“It's not the war.” Eva sighed. “Well, I guess it is, sort of. But I think it might have happened anyway. I loved your father, really I did, but I never got the chance to find out if I would have loved him forever. I can't... I can't forget the things I learned out there; he married someone small and I can't be small again.”

Marco looked up from his plate to meet her eyes. “Aliens or not, you've never been small,” he said seriously.

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “But I don't see myself how I used to. And he doesn't see himself how he used to. We just want different things.”

“He fell to pieces after you left, you know. I'm still kind of surprised that he didn't kill himself. It was hard, and he never recovered, not until he met – ” he looked away quickly.

Eva pursed her lips. She'd never met Nora, but she's heard a lot about her. Marco mentioned her very occasionally, Eva's old friends about town mentioned her more. Peter mentioned her in moments of sadness or anger, still cut up about how such a person could be a Yeerk spy, and about how she could just _disappear_ after everything, not even give him a chance to meet the real Nora and get some closure.

Eva had her suspicions about that. Suspicions born from the look in her son's eyes whenever she came up, from knowing that she and her son thought very much alike. She had carefully avoided having those suspicions confirmed.

“I can't forget,” she said gently, “that when I... that when the yeerk was with me, and I was with you, he never realised anything was wrong. I know that's not his fault. I know that's what they _do_ ; they get in your mind and in your life and slide into your family and things continue as normal. It happened to hundreds of people, I know that. I know I can't expect him to magically know that something was wrong.” She swallowed. “But that doesn't change how I feel. It doesn't change the fact that I was screaming for help and he didn't notice, and I can't look at his face without remembering that.”

“You'll forget in time,” Marco replied.

“Maybe. Maybe you're right. But I'll never forget that...” she looked away herself then, biting her lip.

“Mom?”

“This isn't your problem. I should go.”

“We arranged dinner. We should have dinner. What were you going to say?”

Eva took a deep breath and let it out slowly. How could she tell him this? How could she burden her son, who had already been through so much, with this knowledge? But she wanted him to understand. He had to understand.

“I think,” she said quietly, deliberately, wondering with every word whether she should continue, “I think that he loved the yeerk more than he loved me.”

For a moment, there was perfect silence, perfect stillness. Eva didn't dare look up at her son. She didn't dare breathe. Then, suddenly, a flurry of movement.

Broad, strong arms – the arms of a young man; she still wasn't used to how much he had grown – encircled her, gripped her, shielded her. Her son's face pressed into her neck, her hair. There was no joke on his lips, or on hers, but there were tears running down both their faces.

“You'll sort this out,” Marco whispered into her hair. “You'll do whatever you need to, you and Dad. Together or apart, it doesn't matter. You've always pulled through before.”

Eva put her arms around the boy, the little boy, the man, who had taken on alien invaders and won, who had lost and rebuilt his family so many times she'd lost count, who had taken the messy aftermath of the war in hand and made it dance for him until he could restructure his world into something that was sort of okay, and hugged him back.

“It's a family trait,” she whispered.


End file.
